


Baby, You're Much Too Fast

by entwashian



Category: The Middleman (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 16:40:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entwashian/pseuds/entwashian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roxy Wasserman has a problem.  Ida (reluctantly) helps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baby, You're Much Too Fast

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aris Merquoni (ArisTGD)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArisTGD/gifts).



A chime signaled to indicate that someone had entered the Jolly Fats Wehawkin Employment Agency Front, but video monitors showed no waiting clients.

Ida made her way up the stairs.

She was met by a blonde whirlwind with flashing red eyes and row upon row of sharp teeth.

“Succubus.” Ida identified the intruder, while reaching for the emergency button hidden beneath the reception desk.

“Correct, if presumptuous, android,” the intruder replied, the color of her eyes fading into a less threatening shade of blue, even as she grabbed Ida’s arm at the wrist, preventing her from pushing the button.

Without easing her grip on Ida’s wrist, the intruder clamped her other hand on Ida’s shoulder, and used her leverage to flip Ida over the counter. The unintentional 180 flip caused Ida’s internal gyroscope to commence recalibration, rendering her unable to fight back as an arm wrapped around her waist and dragged her out of the building.

“You’re gonna regret this,” Ida warned.

“Oh, sweetheart, believe me, I do,” her captor replied, loading her into the passenger seat of a bright red convertible sports car. “As though I want to be seen with anyone wearing _that_ dress.” The succubus slid on a large pair of dark-tinted glasses, and took a seat behind the wheel of the vehicle.

Ida heard the squeal of rubber against asphalt, and as her motion sensors came back online, she measured their rate of acceleration to be far in excess of that allowed by the law.

“You may as well contact MM,” the succubus said, wrapping a scarf around her head and clipping it into place. She used her knees to keep the car rolling in a straight line. Also against regulation.

“I already am,” Ida said, eyes rolling back in her head.

* * *

The Middleman was about to slather his hot dog with sauerkraut when his watch chimed once. Then it quacked. He turned to his partner.

“Wendy, I appear to be receiving an urgent message from Ida,” he said. He checked the surface of his Middlewatch, but it remained dark and blank. “Yet the transmission doesn’t seem to originate at HQ.”

“Ooh, creepy,” Wendy said, squeezing a stripe of mustard onto her own lunch. “Is the call coming from inside the house?”

“This is no laughing matter, Dubby,” the Middleman replied. “As our only contact with O2STK, part of Ida’s marching orders are to never leave the Middleman Headquarters. If she’s choosing to disregard that mandate, something must be seriously wrong.” He depressed the button on his Middlewatch to listen to the audio feed.

* * *

“I am experiencing a Code 314 dash B,” Ida said.

“Leaping lizards!” the Middleman exclaimed. “Have you given a sitrep to O2STK?”

“Negative,” Ida replied. The succubus gave her a sidelong glance, able to hear only one side of the conversation.

“The perpetrator?” the Middleman asked.

“Unknown,” Ida said. “A succubus.”

The succubus flashed her teeth and leaned across the console to put her face near Ida’s. “It’s me, MM!”

“Roxy Wasserman!” The Middleman sounded astonished.

Ida harrumphed. “That explains so much.”

“Has she not given you an explanation for your abduction, Ida?” the Middleman asked.

“Wasserman’s not talking, but she’s leaking mating pheromones into the air at an unnaturally high rate,” Ida said.

Roxy sighed. “That’s not all. Something is throwing my feeding mechanism out of whack. If any man or woman comes within a 10-foot radius, I begin to suck his or her soul out of his or her body.”

“Which explains why she kidnapped you, Ida.” The Middleman sounded relieved.

“There’s still no accounting for taste,” Wendy said, her voice slightly muffled. “She could have picked _any_ soulless office drone.”

“Put down the ganja, princess,” Ida snapped back.

“Wait a second,” Wendy said. “If Roxy’s running around kidnapping people – for a given definition of ‘people’, anyway – who’s keeping an eye on the wayward succubi & incubi at Famouse Fashion House?”

“Unknown,” Ida said.

“Understood,” the Middleman said. “Ida, Dubby and I have some things to take care of, it seems. Keep in touch.”

“The succubus?” Ida asked.

“Seems like she knows what she’s doing,” the Middleman said. “Stick with her.” He ended the transmission.

“Of course,” Ida said sourly, looking over at the driver. 

The ends of Roxy’s scarf fluttered merrily in the breeze.

* * *

“We have to get back to HQ immediately,” the Middleman said to Wendy.

“What about the fashion house?” Wendy asked.

“It’s not a priority at the moment.”

“Not a priority?!” Wendy exclaimed. “There are dozens of hungry, _murderous_ demons crammed in with each other, their only leader has gone haywire, and that’s not a priority _how_?”

“If O2STK finds out Ida is AWOL, they’ll assume she’s gone rogue,” the Middleman explained. “And as you know from personal experience, an Ida gone rogue is a very dangerous creature, indeed. O2STK will send a team to do damage control.” He paused. “In this instance, ‘damage control’ is constituted of an erasure of the entire Middleman Headquarters, Ida herself, and us.”

“US?!” Wendy squeaked.

“’Too secret to know,’” the Middleman quoted with a crooked smile. “They can’t risk the general populace getting a hint about their existence.”

“OK, so we get back to HQ, do our own ‘damage control’ by… what? Making them think Ida is still there?” Wendy asked.

“I think it’s our only chance,” the Middleman said.

“And the hungry demons waiting to unleash themselves on the city?” Wendy asked.

The Middleman sighed. “Send Lacey.”

“What?! Send her right into the lion’s den? You can’t be serious.”

“She’s worked there before, as Roxy’s assistant,” the Middleman said. “The succubi and incubi will recognize her authority.”

Wendy snorted. “Lacey as the authorities? That’s putting the hen in charge of the foxhouse.”

“I know you don’t want to put Lacey in any danger,” the Middleman said. “But if the situation is as dire as you seem to think it is, they will need someone to look to for instruction. Lacey is stronger than you give her credit for. She can handle herself.”

“She shouldn’t _have_ to,” Wendy replied. “Isn’t that the point of this?” She gestured to encompass their uniforms, sidearms, the Middlecar.

“I know,” the Middleman replied.

* * *

“Lace, I need you to do me a big, big favor,” Wendy said as soon as Lacey answered the phone.

“’Big’ as in grandiose gesture requiring a large amount of time and effort, or ‘big’ as in you know I won’t wanna do it, but you already know I’ll do it anyway because you’re my best friend?” Lacey asked, clapping a lid on her latest batch of fake animal blood.

“Uh, the second one,” Wendy said. “But you can always think of it the first way if you want.”

Lacey smiled into the receiver. “What is it, Dub-Dub?”

“Remember all those times I told you _not_ to go to Famouse Fashion House?”

“I already dislike where this is headed,” Lacey said.

“And remember how you told me you were going to not-dump Trevor by not returning his calls because he was getting a little too intense for you, and that you were done with Famouse forever?”

“Wendy, don’t!”

“I’m sorry, Lace, I just really, really need you to go to the fashion house!” Wendy said.

Lacey jumped out of her chair and began to pace back and forth across the kitchen. “I can’t show my face there after not-dumping Trevor! I’ll look like the biggest jerk on the planet!”

“Listen,” Wendy said. “It’s _because_ of Trevor that I need you to do this. Roxy Wasserman has disappeared, and Trevor is going to be in over his head at Famouse. He’ll need your help to keep everyone – I mean, every _thing_ \-- in order.”

“What? Roxy’s missing?! Is she okay?” Lacey asked.

“I think so,” Wendy said. “Bossman and I are working on it.” 

Lacey sighed. “Fine, Wendy, I’ll go,” she said. “But I’m bringing Noser with me! I need backup!”

“That’s probably for the best,” Wendy replied. “Stick together and make sure neither of you is alone with the models at any time.”

“What are you talking about?” Lacey asked.

“Oh, you know. Models. They can be quite vicious,” Wendy said.

“Sure, Wendy.”

* * *

Roxy pulled off the street and into a parking space in front of a gas station convenience store. 

“Chocolate-covered donuts,” she hissed at Ida.

“What’s your point, hummingbird?” Ida asked.

Roxy rolled her eyes. “In case it had escaped your notice, my body is metabolizing an extremely large amount of energy at the moment, since it is working so hard to release the attractant pheromones while searching for a meal of any soul within sucking radius. Simply put, I’m _famished_. I require sustenance, and if I go within 10 feet of that clerk, his soul will become a tasty little snack – whether I want it to or not.” She eyed the man in the store. “And trust me, I’d rather it not.”

Ida snorted. “Trust you? You haven’t even told me how you plan on solving your little problem, or what’s causing it. Performance issues? Have you tried turning it off and then back on again?”

Roxy paused. “It’s a curse,” she said. “I have an idea of who placed it on me. But right now, **I. Need. Chocolate.** ”

Ida held out one hand.

“What’s this?” Roxy asked, staring at the offending limb.

“I seem to have forgotten my wallet,” Ida deadpanned. “I don’t have any cash on me.”

“Fine,” Roxy said, digging into a handbag. She shoved a handful of bills at Ida. “ _Chocolate_ ,” she hissed again.

Ida exited the car. As she approached the door to the store, Roxy yelled out, “ **Donuts!** They’re as close as you can get to eating a human soul!”

Ida ignored the stares of the patrons pumping gas as she entered the convenience store.

* * *

“So, Ida’s gone AWOL, and we have to convince the O2STK _not_ to wipe us off the face of the earth by tricking them into thinking that Ida is present and accounted for,” Wendy summarized. “…what do we _do_?”

“One of the ways O2STK keeps an eye on the place is to sweep the building at regular intervals to check and confirm that all the proper energy signals are present,” the Middleman replied. If we can forge Ida’s individual energy pattern by the next sweep, in…” he checked his watch. “Two hours, thirteen minutes, we should be just fine.”

“Okay, that doesn’t sound too hard,” Wendy said. “What’s Ida’s energy signature look like?”

“Oh, just a small nuclear reactor,” the Middleman said.

“Wait, this whole time I’ve been working in an enclosed space with _a walking bomb_?!” Wendy said.

The Middleman raised an eyebrow. “There’s a reason she never leaves the building. Besides, nuclear fission was the only reliable power source available at the time Ida was first built.”

Wendy shook her head. “Fine. But we’ll be discussing this later. In the meantime, how the hell do we fake the energy signature of a small nuclear reactor?”

“Dubby, I thought you’d never ask,” the Middleman said.

* * *

“His name is Harvey Hendersen,” Roxy said, dabbing away crumbs from the corner of her mouth. “He’s holding a grudge from back when I temporarily held possession of his soul in the 1960’s.” She held the plastic wrap that had contained the donuts up to her mouth and licked it clean. “I don’t know what he was so upset about,” she said thoughtfully. “It’s not like he was _using_ it at the time.”

“What makes you so sure he’s the guy, mosquito?” Ida asked. “It’s not like you have a shortage of former suckers.”

Roxy smirked. “Actually, I do. Most of the people I fed from didn’t make it out alive. But the reason I’m sure it’s Harvey is because, after decades of silence, he suddenly turned up again at a showing of my winter collection last week.”

“Sounds like the culmination of a lifelong dream,” Ida said.

“I’m sure it was,” Roxy said, “for _him_. The poor man never had a lick of style, though he tried.”

“Whatever he’s trying now seems to be working,” Ida commented. “It’s got you in quite the tizzy.”

Roxy’s eyes glowed red beneath the cover of her sunglasses. “I’ve worked damn hard to get where I am -- _without_ harming a soul. If I feed from just one person, even by accident, everything I’ve worked for comes crashing down. And dozens of succubi and incubi will be back on the street, without the benefit of my guidance to steer them into making the right choices.”

“You’re a mensch,” Ida said drily. “How do we find Hendersen?”

“I did say I once held possession of his soul.” Roxy smiled. “I _may_ not have given the entire thing back.”

“Wonderful,” Ida said. “Let’s make the psychotic spellcaster come to us.”

Roxy clicked her tongue. “Harvey was never capable of casting his own spells. He must have hired someone to make the charm for him, which works in our favor. All we have to do is find the charm and destroy it, rather than attempt to force a spellcaster to reverse his work.”

“I’m sure it’ll be a breeze,” Ida said.

* * *

“I’m so sorry, little guy,” Wendy said to the Interrodroid as she ripped his guts out. His bright blue eyes dimmed sadly as his systems shut down.

“Good work, Wendy!” the Middleman said, clapping her on the shoulder. “This will make the perfect casing for our faux reactor.”

“Did it have to be Interrodroid? I feel like I’ve done enough violence to the guy already.”

“Remember, it has to appear as though Ida is still here. Therefore, we need to make the source of the energy signature as mobile as she herself is.”

“Fine, but if we’re going for realism, I’m grabbing a curly wig and a paisley dress to make sure our decoy has the correct look,” Wendy said.

“I’m sure Ida would be touched by your thoughtfulness,” said the Middleman. “Please fetch the middle-synchotron while you’re at it.”

“You got it, boss.”

* * *

“You bought the wrong kind of candles for the summoning ceremony,” Roxy snapped at Ida.

“Shove it up your proboscis,” Ida snapped back. “This was the only kind of candle the store had in stock. Unless you want a triple-wick, blood orange scented pillar candle.”

Roxy narrowed her eyes. “I suppose I can find a way to make it work.”

“You’ve got a piece of Hendersen’s _soul_ ; do you really need any of this stuff?” Ida asked, pulling a box of brown sugar, a pack of clothespins, and brownie mix out of her sack.

“No, I was just hungry,” Roxy said, ripping open the box of brownie mix and literally inhaling the powder.

“Nothing sucks like an Electrolux,” Ida observed drily.

“Can it, small wonder!” Roxy bit out, tearing into the brown sugar. “I need to get my energy levels up before I start the ceremony.”

“Fine, but I’m not cleaning your filter once you’ve finished,” Ida said.

* * *

“Hey, Ida, how’s it going?” Wendy asked as the Interrodroid lurched around the corner. Its eyes flicked from blue to red, and it reached into the pocket of its bright floral dress and threw what appeared to be a hand-rolled stogie at Wendy’s face. “Whoa. You are taking this job way too seriously,” Wendy muttered, hurrying away from the robot.

Further down the corridor, she ran into the Middleman and asked, “How much longer do we need to keep up this pretense?”

The Middleman laughed. “ **What pretense, Dubby?** ” he asked loudly, then added, in a stage whisper, “Act normally! There are 7 minutes until the sweep. I believe we have the middle-synchotron calibrated to be emitting the correct amount of gamma radiation for O2STK’s sensors to pick up, but if not… Wendy, it’s been a pleasure serving with you.”

“Hey, don’t go getting all weepy on me!” Wendy exclaimed. The Middleman gave her an emphatic look. “I mean, **it’s only a glass of spilled milk** ,” Wendy announced to the potentially-monitored-by-the-O2STK room. “ **Nothing to get upset about!** ”

The Middleman beamed in approval.

* * *

Roxy took a clothespin and snuffed out the wick of the candle. As she pulled back the clothespin, a lump of cooling wax came with it, and the spring at the hinge of the clothespin clinked delicately against the glass jar that held the candle.

She raised an eyebrow. “It would have been more elegant with a taper candle.”

“Now what?” Ida asked, unimpressed.

“Now we wait for Harvey to show up,” Roxy said, absently studying her nails. “Then we kill him.” She looked up, eyes starting to go red in the pupils. “Just kidding. I think.”

A teenage boy rolled by on his skateboard about 20 feet from where they were sitting in the convertible. He slowed as he got closer and closer, a confused look passing over his face as he stared at Roxy. She looked back hungrily.

Ida leaned over and slammed her fist down on the car horn. The teen jumped, breaking eye contact, and quickly moved on.

“Get a grip, riptide, before you pull someone under,” Ida said.

Roxy hissed at the loss of her prey, and turned her teeth on Ida. Ida just stared back at her. “Fine,” Roxy said at last. “I’m just so _hungry_ ,” she added, pouting.

“Look alive,” Ida said, tilting her head to indicate the direction Roxy should look. Roxy turned her head, and immediately tensed.

“That’s him.” Roxy vaulted over the side of the convertible, and stalked over to the approaching man.

Grumbling, Ida followed, appropriately using the door of the car.

“Harvey,” Roxy purred, rubbing up against the dazed-looking Hendersen. “You’ve got your hands on quite the clever little charm.” Hendersen’s face went white. 

“How did you know it was me?” he stammered. Roxy licked her teeth. “I mean, I don’t have it on me!” Hendersen switched tactics. “If you kill me now, you’ll never break the curse!”

“Sweetie,” Roxy said, drawing out the endearment to make it sound like an invective, “you _definitely_ have the charm on you. Or else I’d be sucking that grubby little soul right out of your equally grubby little body at this very moment.”

Hendersen swallowed.

“You can hand over the charm now, or you can hand it over now,” Ida said.

“You’ll just kill me as soon as I do!” Hendersen shrieked fearfully, looking into Roxy’s face.

Roxy stepped back, a look of disgust on her face. “Harvey, you’re the last person on _earth_ I want to eat.”

“Oh,” Hendersen’s face fell.

“Tell you what,” Roxy said, “you hand over that charm right now, and not only will you get to go on living out the rest of your miserable life, I’ll even throw in the tiny sliver of your soul that I’ve held onto all these years.”

“And I won’t kill you by tearing you limb from limb,” Ida added helpfully.

“Fine, fine,” Hendersen said, digging into his pockets. “Take the stupid thing.” He threw a small amulet onto the concrete at Roxy’s feet, and it cracked in half.

Roxy inhaled deeply through her nose, then let out a relieved sigh. Then she lifted her foot and stamped down on the amulet, pulverizing it into dust.

“Roxy,” Hendersen said hesitantly, when he wasn’t immediately seized and murdered. “I thought that you… I thought we… after all these years, why were you still holding onto a piece of my soul?”

Roxy barked out a laugh. “Kid, don’t flatter yourself. The only reason I still had that thing is because _no one else wanted it_.” She turned on her heel and walked back to her car.

“Stop messing around with magic,” Ida said to Hendersen. She smiled. “Or you’ll be seeing me again real soon – with a couple of my friends.”

* * *

The tires squealed as Roxy’s car came to a sudden stop in front of the Jolly Fats Wehawkin Employment Agency.

“Ta ta, Rosie!” Roxy called. “Give Elroy and Judy my regards.”

Ida climbed out of the car, and with another squeal of the tires, Roxy was gone.

“Finally,” Ida said to herself.

She walked downstairs from the temp agency front to the Middleman HQ, only to find it empty.

“Boss?” she called out, then noticed movement in one of the surveillance monitors.

The Middleman and Wendy were in the interrogation room with the Interrodroid, who was wearing a curly wig and one of Ida’s own dresses.

They were playing Go Fish.

“Home at last,” Ida said sourly.

**Author's Note:**

> Hat tip to Aris for leaving me the BEST EVER prompt to write: "Have Roxy kidnap Ida and go on a road trip with her."
> 
> Title from the song "Little Red Corvette" by Prince.


End file.
